Over the weekend, I posted a photo on Facebook of a client's dog. This week for our appointment, I took him on a "field trip" into town so that we could work on his behavior out in public spaces. You see, this is a pandemic pup. He's been raised indoors and basically had all of his experiences limited to his own yard and neighborhood. If these had been non-pandemic times, he would have attended a couple of rounds of puppy classes, met all of the friends of his kids while walking them to school, etc. Since these are pandemic times, however, his experiences have been limited. Now that we can be out in public more, it was time to put all of the training we've done at home in his yard to practical use, hence the field trip. Here's what it looked like:
I put a car seat harness on my dog friend and loaded him into my car. This means we worked on standing nicely to put the harness on, patience with being loaded into an unfamiliar vehicle, and even more patience while I connected his safety harness to my seatbelt. Finally, we were off. I was fortunate that he is a very quiet car companion. If he'd been barking or whining, we'd have worked on that as well. When we got to town, patience was once again required as I got him out of the car, masked up, and removed his car harness, switching it out for his walking harness. We walked all over town, up one street and down another. Stopping at all crosswalks to practice sits and waiting to cross. We worked on not pulling on leash to meet other dogs and people. If people wanted to greet him, I sent him out to the end of his 6 foot leash to say hi. We'd already worked on not jumping on new people, so I crossed my fingers that he wouldn't jump when sent out on his own. Whew! No jumping. People were lovely, telling him what a good boy he was, thus reinforcing his calm behavior. Normally, I would have taken him into some of the dog-friendly stores, but given the limits on the number of people who could be in those stores at any given time, I didn't want to keep someone who was actually there to shop from being able to get in. We stopped at several benches where I sat down and pretended to be working on my phone. His job was to sit or lay quietly, not jumping on me for attention or whining to resume the walk. This took a bit more practice as he really doesn't like it if I appear to be paying attention to anything but him! By the 4th bench we stopped at, however, he had it figured out. I treated it like a game; if he was quiet and didn't stare at me, he got a treat. If he whined, jumped up, pawed me, or stared, he was ignored. The hardest part of the lesson was walking past people sitting with their dogs. My canine charge was fine; he knows better than to try to engage other dogs when on leash with me. Those other dogs, however, often came flying at him to say hi. I wasn't really worried about most of them as they were friendly. It was the two aggressive dogs, however, that gave me pause. One actually dropped into a predatory posture, eyes dilated and frozen body before the pounce. The owners were completely oblivious to their dog's behavior until he leaped up, nearly yanking one person's arm out of the socket and almost tipping over the cafe table! Yikes! Luckily, I saw all of this before it happened and I scooped up my little buddy and gave the lunging/barking/snarling dog a wider berth as we went past. While the other dog's owner did issue a small apology and indicated that his dog does this all the time, all I could think about was other dog owners who are likely less observant than me who just want to walk in town and window shop, and not have to be concerned about aggressive dogs coming at them. While I firmly believe it is every dog owner's right to take their dogs in public, they do need to work with those dogs on good behavior in public spaces. Probably would have been better to leave the dog we saw at home if they'd intended the trip out to lunch to be one without incident; they knew their dog had issues. Or, if they couldn't leave him at home, how about humane muzzle training for him so that the general public would see the muzzled dog and naturally give them more space to keep the dog under threshold for aggression? Food for thought. The funniest part about all of this was the owner commented on my canine friend "shooting him stinkeye" after the incident as we were walking away. I smiled behind my mask. My little buddy knows good dog and human behavior when he sees it and that definitely wasn't it!
After an hour of walking around in town with all of those sights and smells and new people and things, my buddy was exhausted. We headed back to the car where he was more than happy to trade his walking harness for the car harness and be lifted back into the vehicle and air-conditioned comfort for the ride back home. Mission successful!
Turns out that someone I know saw us walking in town, but between the mask and the unfamiliar dog on the end of the leash (it wasn't one of my collies!), they figured they must be mistaken and didn't give me a shout out. When they saw the picture of the dog on Facebook, however, they knew it had been me after all and asked why I was walking someone else's dog. Teaching your dog to be comfortable with friendly strangers and trust other people besides you is an important skill. Dogs need to go to the vet's office and the groomer without us now, making this level of trust and good behavior in public even more important. I am grateful to have clients who trust me with their canine family members and allow me to take them on these types of field trips where we can increase the distractions and teach life lessons in real world scenarios. These sessions benefit everyone involved and result in happier families as a result. Plus, my little buddy was exhausted when we returned home and took a much needed nap, thus giving his humans some additional time to themselves.
If your puppy or adolescent dog is ready for one-on-one field trips like this, let me know, and we can set one up in your area. As always, if you have questions about your pet's behavior, you know where to find me.
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